Wavewalk Kayaks

It’s always fun to watch kids paddling a W kayak, regardless of their age and where they paddle it.

The sense of confidence they get from the boat sooner or later translates into visible progress, tricks and stunts.
In this case this nine year old boy had to break his own record in jumping in the kayak. We have reasons to believe he may have been hoping to capsize the boat…
He kept jumping and managed to produce a lot of spray - relatively to his weight. Then he gave a pretty impressive performance of standup paddling, which is not surprising since kids seem to find position more ‘natural’ than paddling in the lower positions.Eventually that kid and his 12 year old brother kept fooling with their boat in new and creative ways, and ended the session by declaring -”This is fun!”



Paddling and just drifting down a river standing in your W is a new and exhilarating way to travel and fish.
The river and scenery are experienced differently than when you’re sitting or riding in your kayak, and fishing is altogether different.
First of all, you can see more of what’s around you, whether it’s the water or the banks that you’re interested in. Wildlife and vegetation are more visible, and fish can often be perceived in the water when they wouldn’t be from a lower position.
Paddling down river is always easier than up river, and when you paddle standing you can paddle and steer at the same time by applying canoe-style J strokes on one side of your W kayak. If the stream is fast enough to carry you at a good speed you can just stand and occasionally dip your paddle to correct your course.
You can also paddle fast - both on one and two sides of your W kayak. Even speed is sensed differently when you paddle standing - Imagine going down a snowy mountain slope sitting on a sled and then standing on skis… The difference is comparable, although going on snow is faster in both cases.



The following text was copied from an article published on a kayak fishing website:

“This next statement is important. Kayaks are not boats. Let me repeat that, kayaks are not boats. There’s a lot of room in a boat so you can move around. Even a very small boat has much more room then the largest kayak…. -Let’s look at the situation. In a kayak you’re pretty much restricted to staying in the seat area. You’re going to be most comfortable here and this is where the stability is. “

(The author of this article is unknown)

Why is this passage interesting? -Because it reflects reality as perceived by all people who fish from SOT and SIK kayaks: Restricted space, limited mobility in the cockpit, clutter and eventually discomfort - although the anonymous writer refers to the seat area as being the ‘most comfortable’ for the kayak fisherman to be in, which makes sense only because there is practically no alternative in SIK and SOT kayaks…

Technically, sit-in (SIK) kayaks are boats: They are small, hollow vessels stripped down to the minimum functionality in terms of load capacity, speed and functionality.

Sit-on-top (SOT) kayaks are not vessels - they are boards, which can be completely filled with foam and contain neither passengers nor cargo. This is why it makes more sense to classify them as ‘not boats’, as the writer did.

W kayaks are boats, with all the characteristics of boats. They even offer enough internal space and stability for the passengers to change their location within the passenger compartment called ‘cockpit’.

The author of that article quoted here was probably unaware of the existence of W kayaks when he/she wrote it.

W kayaks even offer passengers to stand up while propelling the boat, and when fishing from it, and that’s a feature that not all bigger boats can offer.

What SIK, SOT and W kayaks have in common is their small size and light weight that offers their owners the possibility to cartop them and carry them along considerable distances on shore. This small size and light weight are essentially what differs fishing kayaks from fishing canoes, which are usually bigger and heavier - although some of the bigger fishing kayaks are as heavy as canoes, and may require a trailer…

Being a kayak fisherman or a regular paddler you may be interested in improving your stand up paddling skills and technique. This is a short movie that shows how paddling standing in the W kayak is done on flat water:

The video also shows some ‘warming up’ exercise: Jumping up and down in the cockpit.

This image taken from the video clearly shows the W wave created by the W Kayak bow:

A standup paddling board surfer asked me whether he could use his single blade, extra long standup paddle-surfing paddle for paddling a W Kayak. -Standup padding surf boards is becoming trendy in the board surfing community, and I find this question to be interesting.

Surfers’ paddles are single bladed and look like extremely long canoe paddles. They are usually made several inches longer than the paddle-surfer himself, and would work well for standup paddling a W Kayak. However, using such a long paddle would be uncomfortable in the lower W positions, which are riding (mounted), sitting and kneeling.

The picture below shows me demonstrating standup paddling in a W kayak using a single blade paddle made from one part of a Mohawk two-pieces double blade paddle equipped with the T-grip extension handle.

These single blade canoe paddles (or shortish standup paddle surfing paddles, if you prefer…) are 5′ 3″ or 5′ 1″ long, which makes them slightly longer than regular canoe paddles are. They are good enough for standup paddling - unless you’re exceptionally tall (I’m 6′). However, since these paddles are shorter than the surfers’ standup paddles they also work very well for the lower paddling positions, that is as a regular ‘canoeing’ paddles, which is what they were basically designed for.

Yoav